The governing body of French Racing, France Galop, has officially confirmed last Saturday that it’ll be resuming meetings at Longchamp, Compiegne, and Toulouse on Monday. It is said to only have happened all thanks to Edouard de Rothschild, FG’s president, after being able to persuade France president, Emmanuel Macron, to sanction the resumption of Horse Racing in France.
After the approval has been given, the FG president thanked France’s prime minister, Édouard Philippe, and Macron on a Twitter post on Saturday morning, which acted as the final confirmation for the resumption despite having some late objections, which seemed like selecting tips in a lucky 15 as the decision have been made.
The dissents were reported to have been laid by several groups of senior executives from French Football, that has been on a temporal suspension, alongside other giants sports teams in the country, until summer.
Speaking to the media, De Rothschild, who is a known leading owner and breeder, said: “I wanted to win this race more than any of the others, together we did it! The resumption of races is accepted. Let’s show them that they were right!”
While several people were slandering the return of horse racing on Twitter, some were responding positively. French footballer Antoine Greizmann was one of the positive ones and probably the only footballer, who supports it, as he is known to have an ever-growing racehorse having recently retired the famous Tornibush that won the Group Three competition back in 2018 same year his owner lifted the World Cup for his country.
Right after announcing the return of horse racing, France Galop released another statement claiming that the track in Paris, which has been dubbed as the “Red Zone,” will be opened to horse racing competitions as the government plans to ease the coronavirus lockdown a bit. Still, the races will be held behind closed doors.
The statement reads via The Guardian: “France Galop, LeTROT [which regulates trotting] and the National Federation of horse racing have received the government authorities’ definitive approval for the resumption of racing behind closed doors from 11 May.”
“The parent companies would like to point out the importance of respecting the barrier gestures [physical distancing] at the racecourses and thank everyone involved for following the sanitary procedures to the letter, which is crucial for the resumption of racing.”
Germany was the first country to resume its horse racing, having resumed on Thursday, now France will be the second while the British Horseracing Authority has not been able to convince their prime minister.
